


Shooting Star

by RussianSunflower3



Series: Sunflower's Yamaguchi week 2015 [1]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Development, Freckles, Gen, Stars, Yamaguchi Week 2015
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:06:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5164910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RussianSunflower3/pseuds/RussianSunflower3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yamaguchi was much like a star, in many ways. It just took time for him to see it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shooting Star

**Author's Note:**

> Song recommendation - Shooting Star by Owl City.  
> Trust me, it'll make a lot more sense if you know the lyrics.

Exhausted, Yamaguchi lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling. The glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling were the only thing distracting him from the expanse of empty darkness. He didn’t know what time it was, but he was sure that if he opened the blinds, he’d be able to see real stars in the sky. He closed his tired eyes, forced his aching muscles to relax. It had been a grueling practice, on all of them, but Yamaguchi was feeling the burn. 

He counted to 10, whispers breaking the silence as if he had shouted, and peeled his eyes open once more. The burning sensation wasn’t only in his muscles. It was crawling under his skin, it was pacing through his veins, it was charring his mentality. The charring smoke swirled behind his eyelids and he could feel the heavy thoughts trying to weigh him down.

_‘Not this time.’_ He pushed off his duvet. Time be damned, he wasn’t going to lie in bed and let his self-deprecating thought drag him into misery. He grabbed a hoodie to wear over his pyjamas, just so that his bare arms wouldn’t be exposed to the cold. A pair of neon green socks were tugged onto his feet before he trundled downstairs and hid them in his shoes. 

He escaped from the chokehold of his house with a quiet click of the front door closed from the outside. His mother would kill him. If she knew, that was. But this wasn’t the first time Yamaguchi had snuck out at night hours after a harsh training session. His mind needed the space, the silence. His pace sped up as he tried to escape the tiring sensation of water building up behind his eyes. 

He broke into a jog. The trail he followed was ingrained into his memory, so Yamaguchi didn’t even need to look to see where he was heading. His feet knew the way. Exactly 100 concrete steps up a hill, he skidded to a stop. Clouds of mist swirled in front of his face as he panted to regain his breath. Slowly, he righted himself and walked to the edge of a viewing platform that spanned the entirety of the town below. But Yamaguchi did not look down.

“Aldebaran... Pleiades... Spica... Corvus... Mercury...” He spoke the names as he located them in the sky, constellations, stars, and planets. Way up in the air, on this platform above the town, he was finally free. He was among the stars, he was _with_ the stars. Yamaguchi wanted to stay right next to the stars all night, but if Mercury was that low on the horizon with Corvus visible... It was only about 45 minutes before dawn. 

It didn’t matter. He’d shaken off the heaviness that had weighted him down before. Making his way back down, Yamaguchi slipped on the edge of the step. It was only grabbing onto the handrail that stopped him falling too hard and he let out a half-bitter, half-triumphant laugh.

_‘Even gravity is trying to pull me down. But not this time~.’_

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

As expected, Yamaguchi had been utterly shattered when he arrived at practice. He’d been late to the spot where he usually met Tsukishima, so the blond had gone on ahead without him. The second that he’d dragged himself into the clubroom, Hinata had commented on the dark circles beneath his eyes and his obvious lethargic voice. Yamaguchi didn’t have the energy to dispute, but he had just about enough sass left to roll his eyes and silently start to change. The idiot duo left to go and help set up the court, leaving Yamaguchi alone with his best friend.

“Another bad night?” Although posed as a question, Yamaguchi knew otherwise.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Tsukki.”

“That’s the third time this week, and in case you haven’t noticed, it’s only Thursday.”

“... It’s not Wednesday?” A flutter of panic arose in Yamaguchi’s chest. In a hurry after his dawn adventure, he’d just grabbed the items for the day he thought it was rather than checking beforehand. Tsukishima sighed and narrowed his eyes a little.

“This is why you need sleep. Maybe if you stopped looking at the stars all the time-”

“The stars help, Tsukki!” Both of them were just as shocked as each other when Yamaguchi shouted at him, spitting the words out like they had burned the roof of his mouth. Like there was a star of his own in there, swirling hydrogen and helium that fuelled fire. His eyes met Tsukishima’s, noticing the very faint twinge of concern in those golden eyes. But gazing at each other once the fire had started only fanned the flames hotter. Tsukishima’s jaw clenched in time with his fists and his voice rose minimally. 

“Why exhaust yourself running to the same point every night, Yamaguchi?! You don’t _need_ stars! You-!”

“I do need them! They _help_ , they help so much!” Clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth, Tsukishima spun on his foot and stiffly marched out the door. It was akin to a child throwing a tantrum, but Tsukishima was always more mature than that. At the last possible second before you slammed the door shut, he spoke harshly into the silence.

“You don’t need the stars in the sky when you have the ones on your face.” The echo of the door forcefully closed reminded him of the thumping in his head last night, and the fire that had been in his eyes travelled down to his heart, setting it ablaze with guilt. His heart, in that moment, was a burning white dwarf, blazing against a backdrop of black so dark, it was nothing. 

He felt like it was melting into a miserable puddle. Fire could only be quenched by water, and Yamaguchi felt the pressure behind his eyes building up again. His vision wavered and blurred, but he gripped his hands tightly onto the hem of his shirt and bit his bottom lip until he tasted blood. The pouring rain was trying to put the fire out.

_‘But not this time.’_ He forced the tears back.

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

He’d skipped practice after that. During break, Hinata had tried to get a reason from Yamaguchi as to why he’d skipped. He hadn’t given one. During lunch, despite the generally chatter and volume from students around him, he’d managed to catch a quick nap. It did well to invigorate his body, but he was still painfully aware that his desk was only two rows left and one row forwards of Tsukishima’s. They’d been this way since the start of the year when they were assigned desks by entrance exam score. 

Yamaguchi suddenly wished he’d gotten a lower score, so that he’d be placed further to the front. He could feel Tsukishima’s eyes piercing into him occasionally, as if accusing him of running away from his problems once more. With a deep sigh, Yamaguchi decided to face his problems face on. Once homeroom had finished, he volunteered to take over the cleaning duty for one of his classmates. 

From the corner of his eye, he noticed Tsukishima volunteer too. The conversation wouldn’t be entirely private because they’d be three other students on the same duty, but it was away from the team, and gave them time to resolve the issue before practice. As the rest of the class filtered out, Yamaguchi automatically grabbed a broom from the cleaning cupboard. Tsukishima followed in his stead but retrieved a mop instead. They were placed aside at the edge of the room so that the desks could be pushed aside. As they did so, they quietly spoke.

“I hope you’ve been thinking about what I said.”

“What you said...? Tsukki, I’ve been thinking more about what _to say!_ ”

“... Did you even listen to me?”

“Yes, Tsukki. You said; ‘You don’t need the stars in the sky’, and then slammed the door on me.” Tsukishima sighed as if he was talking to a five year old, and it made the white dwarf star in Yamaguchi’s chest burn brighter, hotter. He could feel the same anger boiling up in his throat and spreading through his veins. The cold ice in Tsukishima’s voice must have somehow overcome these furious flames, because he remained just as aloof as ever.

“I said that you don’t need the stars in the sky when you have the ones on your face.” A red giant slowly started to bloom in each of Yamaguchi’s ears, tinting the tips crimson as he reached up to nervously scratch at his cheek.

“You- You mean my freckles...?” Tsukishima nodded, and gently brushed his fingertips over Yamaguchi’s left cheek.

“You have Cassiopeia here. And on your collarbone, you have Ursa Minor. Your shoulder has Canis Major. You have stars, and constellations all over you.”

“Ts-Tsukkiiiiiiiii...!” Tsukishima could only awkwardly try to comfort Yamaguchi from arms length as the pouring rain finally made its appearance. From Tsukishima’s small words, Yamaguchi felt like he had brightly burst into a million sparks of colour, the specks strewn about the room like he was standing in the centre of a galaxy that extended out from the markings on his skin. 

His freckles may have stayed the same light brown colour to an outsider, but to Yamaguchi, they burned with a myriad of blues, reds, purples, and yellows. The room cleared, the duo headed to practice where Ukai was proud to announce the matchups for Nationals. With the bright grin and glowing personality, the entire team could see Yamaguchi illuminating a world that would try to bring Karasuno down.

_‘But not this time.’ _They were going to Nationals. They were going to keep playing volleyball. They were going to **win**.__

 

\------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 

A thousand heartbeats beat in time. It wasn’t odd, considering the size of the stadium. There were over 10,000 people in there. It was highly reasonable that a 1000 of them would be in time. Yamaguchi could hear each and every one of those 1000, echoing in the tense silence as he held the ball in his hands. The referee had just blown his whistle and Yamaguchi could feel light ebbing into his world with each heartbeat he could hear, that he could feel, that he could **see.**

_‘3 beats, one second... 6 beats, two seconds... 9 beats, three seconds.’_ He threw the ball up in the air in front of him and set his pace.

_’12 beats, four seconds.’_ His perfectly flat palm impacted the ball.

_’15 beats, five seconds.’_ There was absolutely no rotation as it headed over to Fukurodani’s side.

_’18 beats. Six seconds.’_ Bokuto and Konoha were sprawled on the floor with their palms extended in desperation, watching with distraught faces as the ball rolled from where it had landed, bounced a centimetre away, and continued to move.

For Fukurodani, the lights had flickered out and died. It had only taken six seconds. But amongst the roar of the stadium with his teammates piling upon him, Yamaguchi stood with his head high and pride swelling inside him as he shined brighter than the rest. This dark planet had come to life, no longer a galaxy, but a **universe** spiraling in his vision and spreading out in front of him. 

No, spreading out _from _him. He was the brightest star there, the very centre of those galaxies he loved so much. When the team pulled away to let him breathe, a pair of arms remained around his waist and he glanced down to see Hinata still clinging to him.__

“You did it Yamaguchi! You promised me you’d get 10 points and you _did_!” The freckled boy could only laugh back, too gleeful to form words. In the space of a month, Yamaguchi had come from relying on the stars to carry him through life, to being made of them himself. He was brighter than a shooting star. It was such an elation, he was pretty much numb and oblivious the journey home, until he stumbled off the minibus and a strong arm shot out in front of him to keep him from falling into the dirt after rising into the sky.

“Careful.” He rubbed the back of his neck, straightening up as the Captain looked at him with a parental gaze.

“Sorry, Captain! I’m still a little woozy from adrenaline~.” Daichi laughed openly, patting Yamaguchi on the back with enough force to leave him winded for a moment.

“You did great today, Yamaguchi~... Keep it up; you might get scouted for the international team!”

“E-Eh?! International team?! Oh, n-no way, I’m not _that_ good. I’d just be really dull in comparison to everyone else!” Another laugh, although this time it was more a controlled rumble of amusement. Daichi’s hand on his back was warm, a trusting, confident gesture.

“You’re a star, Yamaguchi. You’ll shine no matter where you are.”


End file.
